How I learned to stop worrying and get ruined with my coworkers

Yesterday we all stopped working at 2 in the afternoon (which is not, by itself, unique) and headed to a Fancy-Danskey reception for our CEO's 50th birthday. My boss is apparently quite well known in the international human rights community, and the party was attended by numerous prominent rights-caring-about peoples, from the mayor of Copenhagen to the Danish foreign minister.

Being the world's most inept mingler, I mostly took the occasion as an excuse to lurk around the cheese and get quietly drunk before sunset. Somewhere in between awkwardly sober and incoherently drunk, I learned the following not-yet-Wikipedia'd facts from my fellow party-goers:

• The former dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, was executed on national TV with his hands tied behind his back. You can tell the age we live in from my reaction: "My God, that's awful. ... So is it on YouTube, or?"
• Argentina used to be more prosperous than Sweden. It was at one point the 7th richest country in the world. I'm not really sure how it all fell down, but at one point the inflation was so severe that stores didn't even put price tags on their goods because they had to raise the prices once or twice per day. People just started trading shit with each other.
• The vast majority of Danish people have never heard of The Kinks, apparently.
• Sudan is geographically the largest country in Africa.
• There is a distinct subculture in Copenhagen of avid cricket-players. (Me, upon hearing this: "Wow. Do you guys play the full 8-hour games, or what?" [slurred giggling]. Cricket player: "Nah, just for 6 or 7 hours.")
• Many European countries don't teach their own history beyond WWII.
• Danish, English and Dutch all have fancy names for ladybugs. In Danish, it's 'The Virgin Mary's chicken'. In Dutch it's 'leaf gold-lover' or something. I just think it's interesting that none of them named it anything remotely resembling 'small red beetle'.